14 January 1950 Blackpool 1 Aston Villa 0
Calm start and lively finish
JUST ONE GOAL
Blackpool 1, Aston Villa 0
By “Clifford Greenwood”
TWENTY-ONE - YEAR-OLD Irishman Pat Daly, from Shamrock Rovers, was given at Blackpool this afternoon in his first game in the First Division a brief which every fullback in football shuns.
His mission was to shadow Stanley Matthews.
After several excursions and alarums at their training quarters in Blackpool, Aston Villa were able with this one exception to field the men who played in the midweek Cup-tie against Middlesbrough, and who expect to play again in the next instalment at Leeds on Monday.
Blackpool had in action the forward line of a week ago, as Andy McCall was still down with a chill, and Eddie Shimwell was back in the defence.
It was again a mild day for January, with the sun shining into the north goal a few minutes before the kick-off.
10 INTERNATIONALS
The attendance bordered on 25,000 and was increasing rapidly when the teams appeared.
There were 10 internationals on view, counting Bill Slater, who will achieve England status next week.
Teams:
BLACKPOOL: Farm; Shimwell, Garrett; Johnston, Hayward, Kelly; Matthews, McIntosh, Mortensen, W. Slater, Adams.
ASTON VILLA: Rutherford; Parkes, Daly; Powell, Martin, Moss; Gibson, Lowe, Ford. Dixon, Smith.
Referee: Mr. A. Murdoch (Sheffield).
Ivor Powell, who is returning to Birmingham tonight to the bedside of his sick daughter, won the toss and put the Blackpool defence into the sun’s glare in the north goal.
The Villa forwards moved constantly on this goal in the first minute, Garrett making two fine clearances, one after a decisive tackle at the feet of Eddie Lowe.
Yet the first goalkeeper in action was the Villa’s Rutherford, as McIntosh, with Mortensen waiting for a pass, preferred to shoot a ball which this goalkeeper took, lost, and snatched up again.
Adams crossed a perfect centre Which Con Martin appeared to head back into his own goalkeeper’s hands as he leaped at the flying ball with the challenging Mortensen.
This raid had been repelled only to the halfway line when another was built in which Adams sent his partner away perfectly for Bill Slater to hook across a centre which Rutherford held on his line.
VILLA CHECKED
Full-back Garrett was magnificent in a Blackpool defence which was not given a lot of rest after these opening Blackpool advances had been halted.
Twice he put the brake on the Villa’s progressive right wing. Once, too, he headed back coolly into Farm’s arms a minute before Dixon shot a ball which hit a Blackpool man and curled out perilously close to the angle of the bar and the far post.
The corner was cleared and another after it, George Farm holding high over his head the in-swinging ball as it was crossed from the flag.
The Villa continued to command five moves out of six, but nothing of any particular moment happened in front of the closely protected Blackpool goalkeeper.
Still the Villa raids continued, and in the first 15 minutes not a lot had been seen of the Blackpool front line, and scarcely anything of it as a concerted force.
NEGLECTED WING
Few passes for Stanley Matthews
It had not yet been an exacting First Division baptism for young Daly, although that was probably because there had scarcely been a pass worth calling a pass to Stanley Matthews.
That, however, has happened before.
What was unexpected was the continuance of the Villa’s attacks on a ground where no Villa forward had even scored since the war.
Farm continued to snatch centres out of the air like a spring- heeled jack, and nearly 20 minutes had gone before Blackpool’s forwards began to operate as a line.
Then, after Matthews had created position for McIntosh to slice a centre which was half a shot inches over the bar, the Villa defence began at last to go into retreat and for a time to stay in it.
OFFSIDE DECISION
Daly went off after one of these raids with a towel clasped to a gashed eye, but was off only a minute, and, in fact, returned as a questionable offside decision halted Mortensen when the leader was moving into a shooting position after a pass headed down to him by the tall Slater.
The football was still good in quality, but as curiously unexciting as it often seems to be after a Cuptie, even if once Mortensen cut halfway across the field before shooting from 30 yards a ball which Rutherford fielded confidently.
Otherwise a crowd increased to nearly 27,000 was as quiet as the football.
Fewer passes than I have seen for a long time were coming from Blackpool’s wing half-backs to the forwards, and every time Slater lobbed a pass forward to the waiting vigilant Mortensen the tall Martin was in his path.
NEARLY A GOAL
Mortensen’s shot hits Rutherford
Yet in the end one of those passes escaped the Irish centre-half. This time it was astutely lobbed forward by Adams, and Mortensen, chasing the ball hit Rutherford with his shot without the advancing and for once deserted goalkeeper knowing, I suspect, a lot about it.
That might have been a goal, even if it would have been against the game’s course.
And another might have come a minute later as Matthews gave his full-back three yards start and passed him before crossing a pass which McIntosh ran into the waiting Martin as he swooped with it on a scattered defence.
Yet without being outplayed Blackpool were still often in retreat, and Farm was still holding centres and shots from a variety of angles and distances.
When last I saw Con Martin in the England-Eire international at Everton the Irishman held a forward line almost unaided.
He was threatening to do it again today against a Blackpool line Which was still however, not playing as I have often seen it play this season, still operating in jerks and spurts which gave an impression of consider- able class to the Villa’s smooth flowing movements.
Yet by sheer pertinacity and an inclination to chase anything McIntosh forced Martin to the concession of a comer, and the corner, worthless as it may have been, put Blackpool on the aggressive again.
PERFECT GOAL
And, with three minutes of the half left, Blackpool, in fact, went in front. It was a perfect goal, too.
The fair-haired Moss was guilty of a flagrant obstruction. Matthews took the free-kick, lobbed forward a ball to which McIntosh leaped, heading it across the face of the Villa’s goal.
And there, waiting, was MORTENSEN, who ran half a dozen yards before hurling himself at the flying ball and heading it fast outside the falling Rutherford’s reach.
Whereupon, for about a minute Stanley Matthews proceeded to inform the England selectors that he was still an England player, and, in fact, in the remaining minutes of the half all order deserted the Villa, who were nearly stormed into the concession of a second goal before the half-time whistle reprieved them.
Half-time: Blackpool 1, Aston Villa 0.
SECOND HALF
Both forward lines opened this half as if intent on putting some punch into it. Yet nothing material happened for a time near either goalkeeper, chiefly because each was protected by a superb centre-half, Hayward and Martin in succession making great clearances with a forward swooping on him.
Adams, who will always shoot, which is a virtue in a wing forward, shot once too often in one Blackpool raid with Mortensen waiting and calling for a pass in an unmarked wing position.
But Blackpool, for the first time in the match, were sustaining a pressure, with both wing half-backs steering passes through to the forwards.
Adams won a comer by a persistent challenge of Martin, and that comer was followed by another which a Villa defence massed almost under its own bar repelled.
There was a fire and purpose at last in Blackpool’s front line.
FLYING LEAP
Mortensen nearly a scorer
Mortensen nearly made it 2-0 in a flying leap after a do-or-die Martin tackle on the leader, and it was seldom in fact that the Villa forwards, such a fluent, composed force before the Interval, crossed the halfway line.
Yet a goal was near in two breakaways. In the first Gibson flashed a shot inches wide of a post, and in the next this right wing forward, who had been given a lot of freedom each time, crossed a centre which the Blackpool defence repulsed more, I think, by accident than design.
Still, Blackpool were winning this game not only on the score sheet but on the field with 15 minutes of the half gone.
Yet the Villa were still not out of this game, entered it again as an attacking force and remained in it Without achieving anything in particular until McIntosh sent Adams away with a gem of a pass.
The wing forward took it and crossed the ball from the line at such a pace that Rutherford was content to punch it out for a corner.
That corner was the unsuspected prelude to episodes furious as any passage in a death or glory Cuptie.
A “SCENE”
It had not been repelled before the referee’s whistle reprieved the Villa goalkeeper with the ball bouncing loose on the line before he cast himself on it.
A minute later, too, there was a scene as McIntosh chased Rutherford as the goalkeeper pursued a loose ball and under the forward’s challenge fell.
I saw one Villa player hit the Blackpool man. Two others came up, apparently intent on a free for all.
In the end, it required the intervention of the two captains and the referee—a sort of three-man UNO—to restore peace.
For minutes afterwards, too, there was a tumult on the Kop every time Blackpool advanced, which was still often, and one or two passages which in the strict sense were not football at all.
They were saying at half-time that it had all been too polite and courteous. Nobody could say that with a battle raging for minutes in front of the Villa’s goal, even if soon frayed tempers began to calm again and there was little to be excited about except a series of great clearances by the besieged Rutherford.
KEEPER HURT
Rutherford in collision with McIntosh
McIntosh had a goal disallowed while the tumult was raging, but afterwards the Villa front line was in the game sufficiently often to indicate that with 15 minutes left the match was not over.
A couple of minutes were lost while extensive repairs were being done to Rutherford after another collision with McIntosh, and in the end, with a few of the waiting crowd giving the slow handclap, another minute went by before this goalkeeper was passed as fit for service.
Immediately Blackpool stormed on his goal, and McIntosh, hitting a fast bouncing ball, nearly tore a hole in the side of the net as he chased it in from the inside-left position.
Punches, or something resembling them, were exchanged out on the right wing before Matthews, eluding two desperate tackles, won a free kick which ended in Rutherford punching a flying ball away from Mortensen.
Free kicks still came afterwards, with the Villa in a desperate and at times unashamed retreat.
FARM S SAVE
Mortensen lobbed one of them inches over the bar before the Villa escaped again in a fast right wing raid which terminated in Farm falling at the foot of the near post to parry Gibson’s fast low centre.
With 10 minutes left the Villa still had a chance to snatch a point on this ground where Villa teams have been unable to win even once in postwar football.
Five minutes were left, and Slater and McIntosh gave Mortensen a position where he should have settled the match. Instead, the centre sliced his shot wide.
In the last five minutes the Villa, still in retreat, had two escapes.
The first time Parkes cleared off the line a shot by Adams which I think, was passing the falling Rutherford. The second time, in the last minute, McIntosh went to earth in the penalty area under a tackle which I have seen visited by the extreme punishment.
Result:
BLACKPOOL 1 (Mortensen 42 Mins)
ASTON VILLA 0
COMMENTS ON THE GAME
IT took this game, and Blackpool in particular, a long time to wake up. But when it was awakened it resembled at times a Cuptie in its fury and intensity.
Blackpool in the end packed the bigger armaments. The forwards had a virility and punch after the interval which was only infrequently revealed earlier in the afternoon, with the wing halfbacks, who had often been reduced to defence in the first half, putting the line into action repeatedly.
That the Villa defence stood firm under this unexpected all-out pressure was a compliment to every man in it, ruthless as a few of them were, and to Con Martin and Ivor Powell in particular.
Otherwise, it might have been stampeded into a rout and not merely lost by the odd goal.
VILLA TIDE EBBED
When Blackpool’s two wing half-backs came into the game the tide ebbed for the Villa completely. They had a good second half, but the men who had a good match from first minute to last were Blackpool’s two fullbacks, the consistent Eric Hayward, and the goalkeeper.
Once it began to raid as a full-line force the Blackpool attack required a lot of holding, with Adams warranting his inclusion again for his direct game and McIntosh nearly running himself into the ground in a nonstop assault on the Villa’s full-backs.
One of these days a Villa forward will score a goal at Blackpool. They have been playing six hours now without one since the war.
BLACKPOOL - CHARLTON Athletic matches - and there is another in London next weekend - are games which the forwards are often only too glad to forget, writes Clifford Greenwood.
The Blackpool front line has scored only one goal - and that was a Willie Buchan penalty - in three matches at the Valley, S.E. 7, since the war, and that was over three years ago.
It was 2-0 for the Athletic in 1948 in a match a week before the Cup Final, when an under-strength Blackpool team played on one London ground but was manifestly thinking about another called Wembley Stadium, and last season it was a 0-0 draw.
There have been similar results at Blackpool, where the Athletic were beaten 2-0 earlier this season, won 1-0 last season, lost 1-3 in 1947-48, and a year earlier played a goalless draw.
Those games could scarcely be called goal rushes.
Sam Bartram, that red-haired acrobat in the Charlton goal, and the rest of the Charlton defence often seem to present a problem almost insoluble to a Blackpool forward line. And the Charlton forwards never appear able to do a lot about a Black pool defence, either.
This time Blackpool will meet a Charlton team that has been descending the First Division table at a considerable rate in recent weeks.
It will, I think, be a desperate team, and desperate teams can often upset the form-book, but, according to that book, Blackpool should not come North again without a point.
THE MORTENSEN STORY — No. 8
Football with the stars - then a bomber crashes
THRILLS AND GOALS OF WARTIME
By Stanley Mortensen
Jottings from all parts
BY "CLIFFORD GREENWOOD" 14 January 1950
BIG HONOUR - BUT TOUR BAN WOULD
BE GOOD FOR FOOTBALL
I AM not blaming Harry Johnston and Stanley Matthews for accepting the invitation to tour Canada with the FA team. Bill Slater would have accepted, too, if circumstances had permitted.
Similarly, when the time comes, it is probable that Stanley Mortensen will take the road to Rio, and there is a prospect that Eddie Shimwell will go with him.
These are, in any case, less invitations than royal commands. It is neither politic nor polite to decline them, except when, as in the case of W. J. Slater, there are good and unanswerable reasons for declining them.
These men, too, deserve these honours.
The selection of Matthews will one hopes, silence all those critics who specialise in the dethroning of the public idols and for a long time have been singing this England forward’s swan song for him.
The Lancaster Gate chiefs evidently realise that the game’s greatest box-office attraction - as Stanley Matthews indisputably is - still has football of the highest quality in him.
The recognition of Johnston is a little belated. Since he played for England against Scotland at Wembley in 1947 and a few months later had to renounce the captaincy of the Football League team when he was unfit, he has been out in the international wilderness.
Puzzling
"WHY he should have been ignored I do not pretend to know. The selectors move at times in a mysterious way their wonders to perform.
Now one is merely content to record that Johnston is back in the representative football from which he has been exiled too long, recalled to it when, in my opinion, he is playing a game of even greater class than he was playing when first he was chosen for an England team.
One is inclined to agree that the failure of the authorities again to accept Eric Hayward at Blackpool’s own estimation of this centre-half as one of the best half-backs in the country - an opinion which may, admittedly, be prejudiced, but with which I am in complete agreement - is inexplicable.
That, however, is immaterial to the present issue. And that issue is that during next summer there will be two of Blackpool’s first team far away in Canada and one and possibly two on the playing fields of the Argentine.
Compliment, but -
NOW I know it is a great compliment to Blackpool and to the men concerned.
But the consequences for the club - as a club - could be unfortunate.
Football for 12 months of the year, which is about the sort of contract to which these summer pilgrims are committed, is two or three months too long.
These summer tours have never, admittedly, been on the scale which they are to assume this year, but since the war they have reached such proportions that one is beginning to question their benefit to the game as it is played in this country.
Unwise
CLUBS are as intent as international selectors on sending their players on these excursions all over the globe. The clubs I think, are being unwise. The international selectors are being, probably without intending or realising it, extortionate in their demands.
The day may come when it is realised, however belatedly, that too much football is being played. The public’s appetite for it is, apparently, as insatiable as ever. They think they would never tire of it if it were played from January to December.
The feast
Mr. Harry Warren
'THAT, I believe, is where they are wrong. Enough is as good as a feast - in football and everything else.
And when you are serving up the feast, and not merely sitting down to it, it can be more than enough.
It is my view that if after this year a ban were pronounced on all these tours for the next five years, football in England would be none the worse for it and might be a whole lot better.
He was still smiling!
WHAT a grand unspoiled sportsman is Mr. Harry Warren, the Southend United manager, writes Clifford Greenwood.
When I was talking to him about his days at Blackpool in the mid 20’s the other day, this smiling Falstaff chuckled a rich sonorous chuckle, and said he, “Forget it. I was never so ‘hot’?”
And when I asked him for I! his opinion of the result of this team’s tie at Blackpool - 24 hours before the match was played - he meditated for a second or two and then declared “Now if my lads were playing the team I was in in ’26 -the same team, mind you, all of us 24 years older - they’d win!”
It’s nice to meet a man who can talk football as if he were not discussing a holy crusade, who still thinks of football as a game, and not, as to so many in football it seems to be, an affair of state, grave and momentous.
***
EX-BLACKPOOL men who were smiling after last weekend’s Cupties:
Bill Lewis in the Norwich defence which held the League champions to a draw at Portsmouth.
Jack Cross, who scored for Bournemouth the goal which defeated Bradford at Park- avenue.
Peter Doherty, who had one of Doncaster Rovers’ three goals at Reading.
Jim Todd, who was in the Port Vale half-back line in the Vale’s win at Newport.
Two who were not smiling but still not inconsolable:
Waiter Rickett, the little wing forward who became a full-back in Sheffield Wednesday’s gallant but vain rearguard action at Highbury.
George Dick, who lent a certain respectability to Carlisle’s score in the 5-2 defeat by Leeds.
***
RAY HARRISON, the centre-forward Peter Doherty has signed for Doncaster Rovers, played his first game in big-time football against Blackpool.
It was at Turf Moor on Good Friday, 1946. He was on leave from the BAOR. and was given a trial by the Burnley management. He looked impressive, too.
The Blackpool centre half facing him that day was Sam Jones.
***
CUPFUL OF GOALS
IT is a remarkable record which Stanley Mortensen has in postwar Cupties. He has played in 11 and scored in 10 of them, with a total of 14 goals for the sequence,
The only time he had not the ball in the net was in the Stoke replay, which the City won in the fourth round last year.
And it is true that he could probably have put at least one other goal to his name if he had not given the two penalties last week to W. J. Slater.
Writes “South Stand" about his unselfish action, “It was, in my view, a fine gesture, typical of a great sportsman."
And so, I think, say all of us.
***
IT was not the smallest attendance at a postwar Cuptie at Blackpool for the Southend United match last weekend, but there has been only one smaller.
Official figure was 25,000. There were only 23,000 for the Leeds United tie in the corresponding round two years ago.
Yet this Southend match was, I think, the quietest Cuptie I have reported in Blackpool for 20 years.
There were few queues. One could have walked on to the south paddock and stood anywhere at kick-off time.
***
THERE are only two men - Harry Johnston and Stanley Mortensen - who have played for Blackpool in every Cuptie since the war.
The Johnston - Hayward - Kelly line has been in ten of the eleven in postwar football, but eight of the men fielded by Blackpool in the first after-the-war tie - the great fiasco at Sheffield against the Wednesday on January 11, 1947 - which was only three years ago, have either left the club or are no longer playing.
This, as a flashback to 1947 reveals, was the team defeated 4-1 at Hillsborough:
Wallace; Shimwell, Sibley; Farrow, Suart, Johnston; Munro, Dick, Mortensen, Buchan (W.), McIntosh (J.).
And in the Blackpool staff during the last three years there have been fewer shuffles than in many others.
***
AS nearly certain as a selection can be is Bill Slater’s for the England amateur team in the New Year.
He could not play at Ipswich in the trial a week ago, but, according to all reports, there were few men on view seriously to challenge his inclusion in the England forward line, writes Clifford Greenwood.
Strange to think that when Blackpool signed him on the day when Jack Cross, the Bournemouth forward, was also recruited for the amateur staff, he was undecided whether to take football seriously.
Even today he is not yet persuaded that he is up to First Division class. Whatever this talented footballer's future in the game may be he will never have to order a new size in hats.
***
SAID Jimmy McAlinden, the Southend United captain, before the Cuptie at Blackpool a week ago “If we are beaten we’ll go down fighting to the last man."
Jimmy, I think, knew that defeat was - almost inevitable, and yet his team played as he said they would play, were all-out as desperately when the score was 4-0 against them as in the first quarter of an hour, when, I was told by the Southend people afterwards, they staked everything on snatching a lead and wards to defence in depti And it could be said of this Third Division team, too, that, in spite of a few spurts of fireworks inseparable from a Cuptie, the temper of the match from the first minute was tolerably good.
Frank Walton, the full-back from the Army discovered for big football bye way, by Mr. David Jack, was never once guilty of a smash-and-grab tackle on Stanley Matthews.
***
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